Rants & Raves: Rev It Up

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Rants & Raves: Rev It Up

Here's what a few of you had to say about our recent stories. To post a remark online in our feedback forums, enter your comments in the text box at the end of any story (registration required). Additionally, you can give our Skype feedback line a call at (415) 992-NEWS (415-992-6397), or message us on Skype at our user name: wirednews.

With all due respect, you are probably unaware of important facts that dispute some key points on this article.

Mazda has a working, hybrid model, the Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen RE. (It's based on the successful RX-8). It's a gas/hydrogen hybrid that switches fuel at the touch of a button. Due to the nature of the rotary engine, there is no need for special injectors to deliver the hydrogen because the intake phase happens on the opposite side of combustion chamber.

In February, Mazda received permission from Japan's Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport to begin leasing the RX-8 Hydrogen RE to two corporate customers.

I could be writing a lot on this e-mail, so I will recommend that you google "Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen RE" and read on. You might be surprised.

Just FYI, Mazda has a version of its Renesis rotary engine that burns hydrogen. It is already leasing RX-8s quipped with such engines to the Japanese and U.S. governments. This is clearly a step ahead of BMW.

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Bruce Gain responds: Thanks for your comment, and indeed, Mazda is doing some interesting work in this area with its rotary engine. However, Mazda company officials are the first to say that their RX-8s – the Mazda spokesman I spoke with said there are only about five on the road now in Japan – are very much in the prototype stage and are part of their R&D program. Series production is far down the road, they say. BMW, on the other hand, is entering series production, which represents a big leap of faith on their part.

I enjoyed this interview, as Gracenote is an oft-vilified company that never gets a chance to respond to critics. However, I feel you missed the most important point they are vilified for.

Gracenote holds several patents, which would best be classified as "obvious," involving doing a database lookup over a network. They will use these patents to sue or threaten to sue companies who use freedb instead of paying cddb. The outsiders' perception is that they settled their suit with Roxio to prevent a company with deep pockets from invalidating these patents in court. They then muscle around smaller companies who don't have the resources for a lawsuit.

So while he mentioned that freedb is still freely available, he didn't mention how Gracenote works very hard to keep it from growing.